


‘Cause I’m as Free as the Bird Now

by laudatenium



Series: Free Bird [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Clint Has Issues, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Insecure Clint, Kids, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2546558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudatenium/pseuds/laudatenium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows something's up with her.</p><p>The main question is, what?</p>
            </blockquote>





	‘Cause I’m as Free as the Bird Now

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd

He’s confounded by her. He doesn’t know what’s upset her.

All he can tell is that it’s his fault.

 

She’s always been a mystery to him. Even after so many years of being the only one the other one trust, she still looks like an entire universe which he’ll never be worthy to enter, let alone understand its secrets, is rotating in her eyes. Her gaze makes him feel smaller and more insignificant than when standing under a midnight sky with the lives of men in his hands.

But he doesn’t want to learn all of her secrets. Some part of him is terrified that if everything was barred, she wouldn’t feel safe, and she would leave.

As if he could judge her.

As if he could let her go.

 

He remembers less than she does. Her past tortures her. He supposes it has something to do with ghosts. Sure, he has ghosts, but they’re all dead. The ghosts that haunt her are still alive. He understands. Death is a certainty. Life . . . well, they both know how unpredictable that can be.

He’s jealous, he’s not too proud to admit. Not of her ghosts, but of their place in her heart. Because he knows. There will always be a place in her heart for her brother, her grandmother. And he never knows what to make of the emotions she has surrounding her niece and nephews.

Not that he wants to replace them, god no, he knows what it’s like to have your brother present in your heart, yet somehow gone, gone, gone. But he can’t help but be terrified of the times when she starts reminiscing of her homeland. It’s not very often, but the fear that sets into him in those quiet hours of the night could never compare to the fear that sets in when he stands surrounded with a dozen snipers on him.

Nothing compares to the fear of her being gone.

 

It’s not that he needs people. He’s never needed them before. Human interaction is fun, before you grow to love them. Because when you love people, they die.

But somewhere between Cairo and Brasilia and Manila, she carved out a place in his heart. And he knows that between Glasgow and Ottawa and Vienna, he found a place in hers.

She’s been there, in some form or another, since the day she pulled a gun on him and gazed at him with her fathomless eyes, and he knew that she would understand anything he would ever say.

He remembers the flicker of hope he saw in her.

 

And somehow, they’re still here. They’ve fought his demons and her demons, crash landed in Vietnam, defused bombs, posed as a newly married couple in Cobo, and somehow landed places of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” which he never fails to announce in a deep voice when they enter a room for a press conference. He doesn’t do it for the kowtowing reporters. He does it for the castrating glare that only he knows means she’s trying not to bust out laughing.

 

In some forgotten registry office in Warsaw is a marriage certificate for Garret Hawkins and Natalya Vladivostok.

Something just for us, he’d said.

He thinks about it a lot.

 

He always thinks about her, it seems. She’s difficult to get out of his head. No matter where he is or what he’s doing, she’s always there, her universe eyes glinting in mirth, her voice saying _Really Barton? You’re pathetic_. She can rip off his testicles with only a few words, but still he loves every moment of it.

She’s beautiful. Not an opinion, simply a statement. He’s never told her this. So often as he lies in wait he will hear a voice growl over the comms “You’re beautiful. You’re gorgeous. You’re sexy.” Usually people declaring how beautiful she is ends with internal bleeding. Not worth risking that to tell her something she already knows.

He knows how beautiful she is. But he’s seen how she can use it with deadly efficiency. When he first told her about the idea of “your body is a temple” and how she had laughed, deep and throaty and genuine, before suddenly stopping and smiling at him with deep melancholy. He’s seen her with another man’s blood dripping down her lips.

She’s a tool, and so is he. The finger on a trigger, a pair of hands to rip lives from whoever was on the list that week.

 

It’s the things she does with herself when she need please nobody but herself that confound him. She’s obsessed with all the different colors of nail polish, and often forces him down to experiment with the newest shade of Orchid Blossom. She insists on sampling the local cuisine of wherever they are. With no one else would he accept a race through a market place to try and find the spiciest curry.

She knits, and it’s weird. The first time Tony sees it, he tries to do his best to sound like he’s debuting at amateur comedy hour at the Punchline. She reminds him that knitting needles can puncture skin as she calmly counts her stitches. It gets a whole ‘nother level of weird when Steve walks in, sees her knitting, and kindly asks for a pair of needles. He stands there with Tony, mouths gaping while Captain America and Black Widow discuss the merits of different sized needles.

(When Tony picks his tongue off of the floor he quips that he expects patriotic socks for Christmas. Tony gets _A_ sock with intricately worked hammers and sickles and bitches about how can she try a put the symbol of communism on an example of why capitalism works and he said patriotic, until she tells him he didn’t specify which type of patriotic. They laugh at the look on his face when she tells him it was Steve’s work. Everyone else got sweaters.)

When the bright minds in Avengers PR get word of this, they ask her if she has anything they could auction off for some charity or other. He expects a bunch of warm hats and scarves and mittens (she never wears gloves in cold weather because she says it’s only asking for frozen fingers), things that would keep people warm in the Russian winter.

There was so much shock that beside the socks that could have come from the 40’s army drives were about a thousand baby blankets, caps, and booties, in a riot of pastels with kitted flowers and satin ribbons run gently around the edges, finished in perfect little bows.

 

She doesn’t really bring it up, which drives him up the wall. He might be able to deal with it if she stated it implicitly. But that’s not her way. She’s not the type to take on a problem head-on. In their line of work, direct confrontation is pretty much a sign of failure of all other ways of dealing with your problem.

Instead she leaves him little hints. Every time they’re in a store with any baby clothing, she will find it. If they’re in a souvenir shop, she will find the souvenir onesie and will show it to him while crowing about how small they are. She sits watching stupid videos of babies doing stupid things with Thor. She makes offhand comments about how different the defense protocols would be in a kitchen with a highchair.

Some aren’t even intentional, which makes them that much worse. Sometimes he just catches her staring wistfully at the little families where parents carry their children on their shoulders. The sight of it makes him feel . . . _something_.

 

“Why don’t you think you can change? You’re mutatable. I know you.”

 

He’s been seriously considering a career change.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, thanks if you've read this so far. I'm writing a final instalmet with a lot more active plot than just the two of them angsting. I didn't think my first fic would be this freeform. I've got some other things in the pipeline. And I'd really love to know what you think.


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